Tuesday 20 August 2013

SolForge Creature Sizes

I mentioned last week that I wrote a program to fight creatures of different ranks to see how the ranks compared.  I modified that program to fight each creature against creatures of its own level and see how it fared.

From that I ranked the creatures and looked at those in the top and bottom half and third of each level.

Now none of this is going to get any interesting results in itself.  We know that Cavern Hydra has a very solid body at level one and is pretty poor at level three.  We know that Sparkblade Assassin is mediocre at levels one and three and is grossly oversized at level two.  The main reason I did this was to quantify some of the intuition I have about creatures.

I really like Metamind Adept.  That card draw actually increases your loe by 2.5 in a 12 turn game, which is a pretty significant increase, but that assumes that the adept itself is always getting its value.  Fortunately, it beats or trades for over 77% of the creatures at all levels, so getting value from the body is pretty believable.

How justified is my love of Darkheart Wanderer?  If you cast a spell the turn you play it and another spell the next turn it is really over the top.  It is very near the top of level one creatures, and even at level three it is still over 75% to trade.  But it's arguably a lot better than the metamind because it actually lives through the fight 36% of the time, which is pretty nice.  When you look at it over multiple battles it is in the 82nd percentile at level three because of the regeneration.

Forge Guardian Beta, which is clearly overpowered at a glance, really holds up under scrutiny.  Unlike other cards with powerful level three versions, the level one and two version are very solid, trading over 70% of the time and coming in middle of the pack for multiple battles.  The level three version is way over the line.

It's also nice to actually run the numbers on level two scrapforge titan, who has relatively low power for a level two but has such high armor that you wonder if it is actually a really solid creature.  It turns out it trades about 65% of the time, which is more than you can rightly ask for given that its level three version trumps nearly everything.

A card that I don't think of that often but which is very, very good is Ionic Warcharger.  It performs well at every level and mobility is very powerful ability.  Grove Matriarch is consistently at the top of the pack.  Hunting Pack is significantly better than I thought, trading for more than 30% of creatures since it turns out the mode health is three at level one.  Magma Hound is basically as awesome as advertised - though not so awesome as it was when it was 5/3 at level one on the beta.

The median attack and health are 4/5 at level one, 8/9 at level two and 14/15 at level three.  This is probably why Metamind Adept looks so nice.  Trading with the median and improving your draws is a one-two punch.  It also makes me even more impressed with Sparkblade Assassin.  Being the median isn't such a bad thing.


2 comments:

  1. Being the median with no ability isn't such a good thing, either. I have a few sparkblades because that's what I happened to own, and I'm trying to get them out of my deck as fast as I can. I find I want my vanilla dudes to have more attack than defence so I can be more likely to trade up when I get a bad hand. If I really want a big butt I can get a wall to accomplish the same thing but better.

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  2. I'm all about the sparkblades because they are so far ahead of the pack at level 2. If you only draw 1 level 2 card and it's a sparkblade, I think you're much better off than with most other level 2's.

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